White House officials have said they have no plans to get behind gun-control legislation, citing the difficult politics of the subject.

***

Obama is no stranger to dipping deep into the murky waters of executive powers and finding ways to achieve policy goals that Congress has thwarted. Proponents of gun control say that the president has crystal clear and uncontested powers—some used by an NRA card-carrying GOP president (Bush resigned from the group in 1995)—to deal with assault weapons.

Yet the White House remains stonily silent on Obama’s intentions even to reevaluate whether to exercise these powers. In the Big Easy, he made it sound as if gun control is always hard. It most definitely can be. But there are actions Obama can easily take, and what’s hard for Democrats and gun-control advocates to figure out is why he won’t.

***

[T]he vast majority of voters who dislike gun control have so many other reasons to oppose Obama that they are unlikely to switch just because he holsters this one issue. Congressional Democrats face the same dynamic. One reason Democrats abandoned gun control is because they concluded that it bled them rural- and blue-collar seats during the 1994 GOP landslide. But after slowly recapturing some of those seats, Democrats saw almost all of them wash away again in a 2010 GOP torrent swelled not by guns but the broader recoil from Obama’s activism.

If there is a road back to a Democratic congressional majority, it almost certainly will not run through such downscale districts; rather, it will go through the leafy suburban seats where gun control retains more backing. Likewise, if Obama survives in November, it will largely be because he maintained support among minorities and upscale women—not because he recaptured the blue-collar whites stampeding away from him.

Gun control is a high-risk issue because half of the electorate passionately opposes it. Yet it is the half that Democrats have little chance of reaching. Since Clinton’s era, almost all Republicans, even those from upscale places still open to restrictions, have bowed to the majority position on guns among their core supporters. However, on gun control, almost uniquely for a social issue, the president and most congressional Democrats have elevated the priorities of voters outside of their coalition over the preferences of those within it. In politics, as in combat, it isn’t much of a fight when one side unilaterally disarms.

***

The assault-weapons ban in place from 1994 to 2004, however, was not particularly successful. In prohibiting 19 brands of weapons (along with copycats), the law’s judgments seemed arbitrary. A gun that resembles a military rifle is not inherently more lethal than an aesthetically innocuous weapon. But the law’s prohibition of high-capacity magazines — capped at 10 rounds — strikes me as prudent. A 100-round, drum-style magazine — the kind that police say the Aurora suspect had in his AR-15 — is highly useful to someone intent on mass murder. It is less useful for an average citizen intent on self-defense, unless he fears home invasion by a foreign army.

Such laws are always a balance. In this case, the gain in public safety would be relatively small — restricting access to a destructive technology used by killers at Aurora, Tucson, Fort Hood and Virginia Tech. But the burden on gun rights would be minimal. Defenders of high-capacity magazines argue that they are more convenient at the gun range, since you can fill up a large magazine before leaving home. There is a constitutional difference between the argument “I need to defend myself from aggression” and “I’d prefer to reload less at the range.”

The temptation at times like these is to “do something” about guns. Australia and Britain passed tougher gun laws after mass shootings, and haven’t suffered another since. I would respectfully submit that Australia and Britain are full of Australians and Britons, not Americans. Moreover, neither country is home to an estimated 180 million privately owned guns, as ours is. Guns last forever. The one with which I hunt was made in 1900 and functions as well today as it did then. If tomorrow President Obama signed the ultimate gun-control law—a total ban on the sale, manufacture, and import of guns—we would still be awash in firearms for generations to come. Madmen like the murderer in Aurora would find a way to kill. Witness Timothy McVeigh…

The harm we’ve done by messing with law-abiding Americans’ guns is significant. In 2010, I drove 11,000 miles around the United States talking to gun guys (for a book, to be published in the spring, that grew out of an article I wrote for this magazine), and I met many working guys, including plumbers, parks workers, nurses—natural Democrats in any other age—who wouldn’t listen to anything the Democratic party has to say because of its institutional hostility to guns. I’d argue that we’ve sacrificed generations of progress on health care, women’s and workers’ rights, and climate change by reflexively returning, at times like these, to an ill-informed call to ban firearms, and we haven’t gotten anything tangible in return. Aside from what it does to the progressive agenda, needlessly vilifying guns—and by extension, their owners—adds to the rancor that has us so politically frozen and culturally inflamed. Enough.

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Mathew Arnold and half of English-speaking Canada are (were)Tories. They went to Canada so they could remain British and not join the American secession from Britain. There was a whole slew of them that left up the Merrimec R in Maine ( including Arnold, who was Washington’s best general).

Rasmussen has him down by 5 points 49/45 Romney. Romney is exactly where Obama was in the polls at this same point in the election in ’08.

I think Romney will win. I’m throwing a party election night… and another one the 20th of January when Obama takes his LAST free helicopter ride back to Chicago. The minute that chopper lifts off… I’m popping the champagne cork!

The Associated PressROCHESTER, Minn. — Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., whose whereabouts haven’t been disclosed since he quietly took a medical leave from Congress several weeks ago, is being treated for depression at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, according to a statement released Friday by the hospital.
Jackson is undergoing an extensive inpatient evaluation for depression and for gastrointestinal issues, the hospital said in providing the first details about his medical condition. But the statement didn’t disclose where the longtime Chicago congressman, the son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, had previously been staying.

I think Romney will win. I’m throwing a party election night… and another one the 20th of January when Obama takes his LAST free helicopter ride back to Chicago. The minute that chopper lifts off… I’m popping the champagne cork!

thatsafactjack on July 28, 2012 at 12:24 AM

I’m not celebrating until Obama is on the ground in Chicago, and Airforce Two is in the air and headed back to Andrews without him.

Interesting that you couldn’t answer the question. You couldn’t answer the question because the fact is that nothing here is private. It’s an open forum. Every now and then, though, we get internet tough guys like you who flex their e-pecs by telling someone to keep out of a discussion, as if you have some expectation of privacy.

Jpeterman
but your defending the person who started it, we didn’t know him from Adam, and he came here throwing insults……… We should forgive and forget……. as Schadenfreude said, we have bigger fish to fry………

……there’s no full moon out…and I’m not used to seeing some of the names I see nipping at each other…it may be because it’s so dry and hot out………….there hasn’t been enough water either side of the Mississippi to fill a swimming pool…..But!…like the guy who drowned in the pool…can I say we reflect on the totality of how we act with these same people on subjects during months and months of threads….where you support each other time and again… and maybe think “Can we?…Can WE ALL get along?
(I don’t want anybody regretting anything…this is a little wierd tonight)…I’m the wierd one…I know!

Interesting that you couldn’t answer the question. You couldn’t answer the question because the fact is that nothing here is private. It’s an open forum. Every now and then, though, we get internet tough guys like you who flex their e-pecs by telling someone to keep out of a discussion, as if you have some expectation of privacy.

It’s always funny.

MadisonConservative on July 28, 2012 at 12:36 AM

Actually, if you understood a few things, you could have waited a few moments. But your ego couldn’t handle that; you just have to be right all the time–like do liberals.

YOU didn’t answer my question, either. So enjoy your high horse there. I simply don’t care either way. I have nothing to prove and seek no regard while you, being a staple around here, have to maintain all the time.

I’m a Conservative. If you reject me from your ranks, I’m okay with that. That’s your loss, not mine. There are plenty of other Conservatives out there other than you.

Actually, if you understood a few things, you could have waited a few moments. But your ego couldn’t handle that; you just have to be right all the time–like do liberals.

Liam on July 28, 2012 at 12:45 AM

Ah, I love it. The awesome people who can attribute any perceived negative characteristic of someone they dislike as “liberal”. Like sitting on a website talking about how you don’t “trust” the website author, as if we give a f**k. Don’t like him? Leave. If you’re staying here, reading someone you dislike or distrust, you’re not too bright.

Are we grouchy tonight? Come on, the opening ceremony was boring but it wasn’t that bad. Or maybe the parts I slept through were! How did the crowd react to “The Blade Runner”.

Cindy Munford on July 28, 2012 at 12:47 AM

Cindy! How nice to see you! Please, come sit over here in the corner out of the way. The boys are wrestling. What was the ‘Blade Runner?’ I couldn’t stay to see the end, I had to get my small, traumatized children home to bed. Did you see the dream sequence or whatever it was supposed to be?

Some people don’t like the music videos on QOTD, some others get offended at LOL (???), others “chit chat” and some people don’t like to encourage the occasion thread thief. Skip what you don’t like, you know who they are.

I thought that exact thing. :) But I don’t think you are supposed to say that out loud. That’s an “inside voice” thing. :) I think. It sounds like one. Like the things I think when I see a hot chick in boots — all “inside voice” things.

Like “damn! you best friend is hot!” — never say this to your girlfriend. Learned that one at 30.

Wrestling! That’s why we can’t have nice things. No I didn’t see the dream sequence, I couldn’t even stay awake to see our kids parade through. The Blade Runner is the young man from Spain who is being allowed to run on prosthetics.